The Human Diagnosis Project combines doctors with AI to bring health care to the uninsured

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August 10, 2017 07:13 AM EDT

While lawmakers debate on and off ways to fix health care in Congress, doctors and tech engineers are introducing a solution of their own.

The Human Diagnosis Project is a network of doctors from around the – tied together by artificial intelligence – that looks to bring often expensive specialty health care to easy access clinics and community health centers.

Its founder, Jay Komarneni, told Circa that there's less of a problem getting uninsured patients primary health care, so getting access dermatologists, rheumatologist or radiologist is where Human Dx is meant to help.

"Through the Human Dx system, the specialist can actually help provide online insight, and then in many of the situations, that patient can get actually just be helped by their primary care physician directly," Komarneni explained.

The Human Diagnosis network comes from an alliance of the American Medical Association, The American Board of Medical Specialties and others. It works by having specialist physicians log in on computers, smartphones or tablets and answer questions related to diagnoses for cases taken in at often low-income clinics.

Where the artificial intelligence comes in is in how the system asks for the right information to accurately connect patient cases with the best specialists.

"The artificial intelligence, it’s learning what’s the most important next question is to ask," Dr. Shantanu Nundy, a director for Human Dx, told Circa. Nundy has been using the system to treat his uninsured patients for the last year. He and Komarneni are now making a push to get more specialists to contribute to their already 6,000-plus doctor network, because no matter how smart the Human Dx system gets, they believe there’s currently no substitute for the advice of a real physician.

"We all want the best possible information. I think that will always, or for a very long time, be a combination of humans plus machines," Nundy said.

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Right now, Human Dx is supported by volunteer doctors, and that’s how its services are provided by no additional fees to clinics or patients.

Though the team is looking into more ways to incentivize doctors to participate, but Komarneni said the network will ultimately rely on medical specialists’ desire to give back as part of this high tech effort to bridge the gap in health care.

"The only way we’re going to be able to solve this problem is by enabling physicians to see more patients more cost-effectively. And the way to do that is with software, data and artificial intelligence."